Doomsday Warrior 13 - American Paradise (6 page)

Rockson halted as they approached a pair of picniclike crew tables on the aft deck.

“My God,” Rock exclaimed, “there’s porridge still smoking hot on the board tables! And hot steaming coffee in the mugs!”

“Ghosts?”
asked Archer, dry-mouthed. Rock didn’t answer.

“Rock,” Murf said, wiping off a brass plate on a door, “this ship is called the
Flying Dutchman!
It’s the cursed ghost ship. Let’s leave—now!”

“Not so fast,” said Rock. “Someone lives here on this seaweed ship. They aren’t ghosts, either. Probably want us to think so. It’s got stores aplenty—I’ll bet. The name on that plate is probably just to scare boarders away.”

“And doing a
good
job of it,” Murf said, nervously looking around. “If it’s not a ghost ship, how come it’s almost like new after three or four hundred years?”

“This ship’s wood,” Rock said, bending down, thumping on a plank, “is hardwood and has simply calcified, hard as metal, like the stuff on the
Sally Ann.”

“Great,” the beachboy said, “but nevertheless, let’s get the hell out of here before the ghosts or
people
that made the coffee come back!”

“Okay, okay! First we see if this ship has anything we need,” Rock whispered.

“You bet,” Detroit said, lifting up his twin .44s. “Ghosts or men, I’ll blast away anyone that tries to stop us!”

To Rock’s disappointment, an hour’s search of the craft revealed no supplies of worth—and no phantom crew, either.

An hour’s farther walk and they were at the aircraft carrier. It was surrounded by a thinner carpet of seaweed that smelled real bad, and was colored brown, not green.

“Why are the weeds dead?” Detroit asked.

“I can guess,” said the Doomsday Warrior, “it was exposed to radiation. This carrier probably is a nuclear job. The engine might be leaking radiation. Let’s get aboard—but via the foredeck. The brown area is mostly at the stern.”

They had to have Archer fire a grapple arrow up, as there was no ladder. They climbed the sturdy line, one by one. The deck was a rustling mass with many holes. Rusted planes sat like mummified ducks farther down its flat surface.

“I bet,” said Detroit eagerly, “that well find some ammo here to replace the stuff lost in the storm.”

Rock had the men split up, cautioning, “Report back here in an hour.”

“If I see ghost—I
yell,”
said the mountain man.

Rockson was the first back. He had some good finds: a sextant and charts. One by one, each member of the exploring team returned with his own pile of goodies. Detroit had found some pistols—well oiled. “They were sunk in grease, we can just shine ’em up. They’ll be good as new.”

“I find ammo,” Archer said proudly as he came out of the gloom.

Archer set down two heavy, black metal satchels. Rockson pried one open and exclaimed,
“Plastique!—
Good man, Archer. We’ll blow the
Muscle Beach
free of the weeds.”

Murf returned looking shaken to his bones. “I found wet footprints! A dozen—or more. Bare feet! It must be the pirate ghosts from the
Flying Dutchman!”

“No,” the Doomsday Warrior said. “Whoever the hell they are, they are flesh and blood humans and—” Rockson froze in mid-sentence, for out of the corner of his eye he had seen one of the sacks of pistols that Detroit had gathered slither away, pulled by an unseen hand. The sack rounded a corner and disappeared.

“There
is
somebody here,” Rock whispered. He rushed to the corner and caught a fleeting glimpse of something fast moving and grey darting down the deck toward the rusting planes.

“What did you see?” Murf asked, coming alongside Rock.

“Looked like a dwarf!” Rock took out his balisong knife and pursued, the others following. When they reached the rusting jets, they saw lots of small skeletons scattered about.

“Kids?” asked Detroit.

“Maybe . . .” Then Rockson saw
them:
stunted, twisted little men in tattered sailor’s outfits. One was limping away with the bags of pistols he had reclaimed, whimpering in fear.

A dozen other miniature beings skittered out from holes in the planes, snarling like trapped rats. One of the super-fast creatures caught its foot in a collapsed piece of rusting airplane and jerked to a halt. Now they got a chance to see what one looked like.

It was a pathetic creature, human but full of sores and spotted with tufts of grey hair. Its nose was big and sniffing, the nostrils flaring; its eyes were tiny cataract-filled things.

“It’s nearly blind,” Detroit said.

His voice caused a panic in the creature, which jerked on its leg and, snarling and yipping in fear and anger, tore free and ran for it.

“My God—mutant humans!” Murf said.

Detroit raised his guns to bring him down.

“No,” said Rock, “don’t shoot. I think these sad creatures are fellow Americans!”

“What?” Detroit gasped. “Those little ratlike things?”

“I found out the name of this carrier,” Rock said. “It is an American ship. This is the U.S.S.
Nimitz;
these sailors are
Americans
—forth or fifth generation living in this Sargasso-like sea—they just probably want to be left alone. They could have shot at us, you know. And they didn’t.”

Detroit put his weapons down, stunned. “The radiation did it, I suppose.”

Rockson wanted to get back to the
Muscle Beach
by dark. They had materials to patch her hull, and charts, explosives and other items they needed. Time to
move on.

Six

A
t dawn, they made good use of the explosives Archer had found. Rock had them set the plastique at intervals all around the ship. When they were detonated and broke up the tangle of seaweed, the repaired sail was raised, and they tacked slowly out of the seaweed sea. It took several sets of explosions to completely free the ship.

In sunny weather, they headed on—not toward the fresh water island—for they had found that the tubular seaweed they exploded contained ample fresh water, which they drained into barrels. Instead, they limped toward Rarapani once more. As they sailed away from the seaweed, Rockson resumed his solitary night watch on deck. He thought a lot about the poor blind scurrying wretches aboard the
Nimitz—
one of the saddest post-nuke races he’d ever encountered! There must have been women sailors on the Nimitz to procreate. Then the odd seafood, isolation, radiation—all had combined to leave their great grandchildren the warped, frightened creatures that they were. The journey weighed heavily on him. The Rock team had gone through a lot already: one ship and all hands probably lost, three of their own crew dead, and they hadn’t even reached their first stop. Maybe this time the cards were stacked in Killov’s favor.

By the seventh day after leaving the “Sargasso,” they had less than a hundred knots to go if Rockson’s calculation were correct. He was using the sextant to take bearings on the sun and stars, while Murf was plotting their course on the old carrier’s charts. Plus he verified the readings with the battered gyro-compass.

There was a squall on the eighth day, but the restored and fortified
Muscle Beach
made it through handily. They even rigged a small second sail, thus taking advantage of the gusty winds to get ahead. When the clouds broke before dawn on the ninth day, Rock was gratified that they had kept on course. They passed a little island called Atu-mara according to the ancient maps, confirming their good course.

The tenth day was utterly still, and they were becalmed. They used the partially functioning solar-power converter to make a few knots an hour. At dusk they saw two odd, brown cumulus clouds on the starboard horizon.

“What do you make of that?” asked Rockson, handing the scope to Murf.

Murf replied, “Well, it
could
be the smoke of Rarapani’s twin volcanos. Or that could be a bad storm brewing dead ahead.”

“Yeah,” said Rock, cynically. “In which case we’d better tack away.”

“Your decision, Rockson,” Murf said.

After a few minutes of trying to get a feeling—danger or not—from his mutant senses, Rock announced, “Let’s take a heading toward the clouds.”

In an hour they were rewarded with the shout of “Land-ho!”

“You sure, Archer?”

In his best tremulous bass voice, Archer said, “MMMEEE SUURRE!”

“Yes, it’s definitely the twin volcanos,” said Murf, climbing up onto the rigging next to Archer. “Congratulations, Rockson, you’re right on course!”

“The congrats are for me and you Murf. The way you and I work, we should open a navigation school!”

They tacked their boat in toward the palm-covered shore. Soon they spotted a dozen war canoes with huge dragon-carved bowsprits heading their way. The telescope revealed the canoes’ crews: comely maidens, bare chested and vigorously rowing.

“We’re here—Rarapani,” Murf exclaimed happily.

“Better than that,” said Rockson. He had swept the telescope along the palmy atoll. “There’s the
Surf City—
safe and sound in the harbor! Both her masts are intact . . . and look—she’s firing up a welcome flare!”

“Ahoy!” came a muffled shout from the lead canoe. “Request permission to board.”

Murf took the scope. “My God, it’s Manny! He’s with the natives!”

The bulky Manny, now quite a bit trimmed down by the ardure of the voyage, was the first to board the
Muscle Beach.
He excitedly greeted one and all. Manny had thought all hands on the
Muscle Beach
were lost!

Murf explained about the three crew members lost, and then about the seaweed sea. They broke open some beers Manny had brought along and drank toasts for each of the departed.

“How long have you been here, Manny?” Rock asked.

“Three days. The natives are, well, spectacularly friendly. Especially the women, as Murf said.”

The war canoes were all pulled alongside now, and up the ropes came Murf’s special girl, Mirani, who threw herself at him passionately. They excused themselves for a bit in the below-deck privacy.

Rockson, Knudson and the other men got into the canoes with the giggling island girls and headed for the beach, their necks strewn with leis. On shore, Rockson saw that there were men on this island, too, but many less than women. The men wore short-cropped hair, had wavy dot-pattern tattoos and were muscular and deeply tanned. They each carried something that looked like a combination small boat paddle and bludgeon of heavy carved wood. A formidable weapon, but not against Soviet bullets.

Murf explained, “The Reds wiped out more than half of their menfolk. There’s a shortage of men on the island—all the more reason we’re welcome.”

Suddenly all the islanders parted way. A tall figure approached, masked in multicolor feathers. Her long jet-black hair was arranged in a halo of a hundred pigtails, tied with tiny shells and feathers. She wore a jacket of blue cowries and beads. Only by her shapely legs and her gait did Rock know for sure she was a woman.

The masked woman came over to Rock and tentatively touched the white streak in his hair. He felt a sudden electricity as he let the strange creature do so.

“Pretty, pretty. I like,” she said.

Rockson had been told that the natives spoke pidgin English and was please to have it verified.

“I like you eyes,” she said. She lifted one of her several shell necklaces over her head and placed it on the Doomsday Warrior. Then she left them, disappearing in the foliage.

“Ho, Rockson!” Murf laughed, “I think you’re being pursued already.” Rockson and the other men each had several girls clustered around them as they crossed the beach toward several large thatched huts arranged among the palms. In front of the huts, elderly people in blue flower-pattern sarongs were beating drums of welcome.

“WHOOOOO IS THHHATT?” Archer pointed with much excitement. His enthusiasm was usually reserved for food, but Rockson, following his gaze, saw an immense rolly-polly native woman crashing through the grass.

“That’s Hohanna,” said Murf. “Just your size, isn’t she?”

“MEEE LIKE!”

Rock winked when he caught Murf’s eyes. Archer stepped forward from the group of men and stared at Hohanna, who froze in her tracks and smiled shyly at him in return.

“My God,” said Murf, “they’re both petrified pink at the sight of one another. They’re—stupefied.”

“Mesmerized maybe is a better word,” Rock added. “I think it’s love at first sight.”

Later, as twilight set in, a large, succulent island boar was turned over a roaring campfire. A feast had been laid out in the village of thatch huts and longhouses for the adventurers. Archer and many of the other men had paired off with native girls. The mountain man had the seat of honor next to Chief Umauu because the chief’s oldest daughter, Hohanna, was sweet on him.

“See,” Murf said, slavering down a dollop of poi, “Hohanna feeds Arch from her own bowl!”

Rockson worried. “He won’t run into any sex taboo or something, will he Detroit?”

“Hell no,” said the team anthropologist, who sat next to Rock on his other side opposite Murf, “the native women are free and easy about such things. They’ve thrown off more than the bras that the missionaries foisted on them! They’ve restored their nature gods and destroyed the churches and the sex taboos of western man. I’ve been asking questions,” Detroit continued, between bites of hot pork ribs, “and discovered a lot. For instance, they call the nuclear war
‘when-the-western-god-turned-on-the-white-man.’
The natives, being so isolated, were not killed, though they heard much of the world was gone. They concluded their saviors were their gods-of-old. So we’re back to the way things used to be on this island and all over the Pacific—pure Polynesian!”

Rockson, when Murf pointed, turned to see Archer being trained to eat lobster correctly by Hohanna. “He usually eats the shells. It makes a
horrible
noise.” Rock laughed. “Maybe she’ll tame him.”

The food was delicious and plentiful, but Rockson soon put it down. A beautiful creature—the epitome of female Polynesian beauty—came ambling toward them.
“Who
is that?” Rock exclaimed.